Schedule

 

FRAMEWORKS FOR THINKING ABOUT THE URBAN Wednesday, September 4 What is a city? Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. How does a city differ from a metropolis and an urban area? 2. How does urbanization differ from urbanism? 3. How can we understand cities as not (just) places but processes?   Monday, September 9 A brief history of urbanization into the industrial revolution Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. How have cities historically organized the conditions for human civilization? 2. How does the accumulation of surplus drive urbanization and urbanism? 3. How does the medieval town introduce features associated with urbanism?   Assigned readings: Mumford, Lewis. 1986 (1938). "What is a City?" Pp. 104-107 in The Lewis Mumford Reader, edited by Donald L. Miller. New York: Pantheon. "Economic surplus." In Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 4th ed. Collins. "Subsistence Economy." In Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 4th ed. Collins. "Medieval town." In The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide. Helicon.     Wednesday, September 11 The urban crisis in America Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. What are the general features of the post-WWII "urban crisis"? 2. How has the historical context in which urban studies emerged shaped its agenda? 3. How do 'problems in the city' differ from 'problems of the city'?   Assigned readings: Suarez, Ray. 1999. "What We Lost." Pp. 1-25 in The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999. New York: Free Press. Beauregard, Robert. 2010. "Urban Studies." Pp. 931-936 in Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, edited by R. Hutchison. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.   URBAN HISTORY: VICTORIAN CITIES Monday, September 16 The growth of the industrial city. Lecturer: Lydia Murdoch. Question for today: What major demographic, social, and environmental changes marked the rise of modern industrial cities?   Assigned readings: Engels, Friedrich. 2001 (1845). "The Great Towns." Pp. 79-143 in The Condition of the Working Class in England. London: Electric Book Co.   Wednesday, September 18 State power and early urban reform movements. Lecturer: Lydia Murdoch. Questions for today: 1. How did the nineteenth and early-twentieth-century growth of state-directed urban sanitary reform movements influence the formation of social classes and class conflict? 2. How did urban reform movements contribute to racial hierarchies and power relations in imperial contexts?   Assigned readings: Wohl, Anthony S. 1983. "Fever! Fever!" Pp. 117-141 in Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sengupta, Ranjana. 2006. "Enshrining an Imperial Tradition." India International Centre Quarterly 33(2): 13-26.   Monday, September 23 Gender and the Late-Victorian city Lecturer: Lydia Murdoch. Questions for today: 1. What gender expectations were associated with specific urban spaces within late-Victorian London? 2. How did accounts of female "slummers" both reinforce and challenge these expectations?   Assigned reading: Murdoch, Lydia. 2014. "Urban Life." Pp. 205-229 in Daily Life of Victorian Women. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.   Recommended reading: Ross, Ellen. 2007. "Introduction: Adventures Among the Poor," or any one of the following primary sources: "A Lady Resident" (1889); Annie Besant, "White Slavery in London" (1888); Margaret Harkness, "Barmaids" (1889); or Olive Christian Malvery, "Gilding the Gutter" (1905). In Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860-1920, edited by Ellen Ross. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.   Wednesday, September 25 Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Recommended reading: Maza, Sarah. 2017. Pp. 14-23, 185-198 in Thinking About History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.   URBAN GEOGRAPHY: LATIN AMERICAN CITIES Monday, September 30 First pair of essays due. South American cities: Space and society, patterns and trends Lecturer: Brian Godfrey. Questions for today: Focus on colonialism's legacies, urban primacy, regional migration, and environmental issues. What are the main forces to make South America (and Latin America generally) among the world’s most highly urbanized regions?   Assigned readings: Godfrey, Brian J., Maureen Hays-Mitchell and Risa Whitson. 2020. "Cities of South America." Pp. 139-188 in Cities of the World: Regional Patterns and Urban Environments, 7th ed., edited by S. Brunn, J.K. Graybill, M. Hays-Mitchell, and D.J. Zeigler. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield.   Wednesday, October 2 Divided cities of Latin America: Informal settlements and urban ecology Lecturer: Brian Godfrey. Questions for today: 1. Focus on contemporary socio-spatial divisions, the emergence of informal settlements (favelas and colonies), and urban political ecology. How is the social geography of group status related to environmental problems? 2. What strategies do residents of informal settlements employ to survive and resist displacement? 3. How has the role of the state changed?   Assigned readings: Martins, Luciana L. and Mauricio A. Abreu. 2001. "Paradoxes of Modernity: Imperial Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1821)." Geoforum 32: 533-550. Godfrey, Brian. 2012. "Urban Renewal, Favelas, and Guanabara Bay: Environmental Justice and Sustainability in Rio De Janeiro." Pp. 259-286 in Urban Sustainability: A Global Perspective, edited by Igor Vojnovic. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.   Monday, October 7 Urban imaginaries: Urban memory, planning and touristification Lecturer: Brian Godfrey. Questions for today: 1. Focus on the role of post-colonial imaginaries, narratives of memory and identity, and urban planning in shaping modern cities of Latin America – why did fin-de-siecle Latin American cities aspire to become like Paris, and what were the social and spatial consequences? 2. How has urban planning attempted to "discipline" cities according to preferred models of modernity? 3. How does historic placemaking and heritage tourism now use memory to promote urban development?   Assigned readings: Outtes, Joel. 2003. "Disciplining Society through the City: The Genesis of City Planning in Brazil and Argentina, 1894-1945." Bulletin of Latin American Research 22(2): 137-164. Godfrey, Brian. 2019. "Remembering Rio: From the Imperial Palace to the African Burial Ground." Pp. 105-120 in The City as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity, edited by A.C. Diener and J. Hagen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Cásares-Seguel, César. 2024. "Valparaíso: Touristification and Displacement in a UNESCO City." Journal of Urban Affairs 46(6): 1192-1204.   Wednesday, October 9 Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez.   Recommended readings: "Urban geography as a sub-discipline." 2009. In Key Concepts in Urban Geography, 1st ed., edited by A. Latham, D. Mccormack, K. Mcnamara et al. Sage UK. Golan, A. 2009. "Historical Geographies, Urban." Pp. 146-151 in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Rob Kitchen and Nigel Thrift. Elsevier.   Fall break: October 12-20   SPECIAL EVENT: Wednesday, October 16, 10am-noon Class walking tour of Poughkeepsie (optional)   URBAN SOCIOLOGY: SMALL CITIES OF THE HUDSON RIVER VALLEY Monday, October 21 De-industrialization and post-industrialization Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Guest visit from For The Many organizer. Questions for today: 1. How did industrialization enable the Hudson Valley's small riverfront cities to grow into regional prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries? How did deindustrialization impact these cities? 2. What kinds of urban problems are particular to small cities? 3. How has the Hudson Valley been drawn into contemporary urban-regional restructuring of the New York city metropolitan area?   Assigned readings: Schafran, Alex. 2019. "Urban Restructuring." In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, edited by A.M. Orum. Nevarez, Leonard and Joshua Simons. 2020. "Small-City Dualism in the Metro Hinterland: The Racialized 'Brooklynization' of the Hudson Valley." City and Community 19(1): 16-43. "Kingston lawmaker says ‘affordable’ housing limit could be lowered," Daily Freeman, September 7, 2024.   Wednesday, October 23 Gentrification in small cities Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. What is gentrification? 2. How have urban scholars traditionally viewed gentrification as a big-city phenomenon? 3. How do creative-class outmigrants displaced by New York city gentrification become gentrifiers in Newburgh?   Assigned readings: López-Morales, Ernesto. 2019. "Gentrification." In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, edited by A.M. Orum. Ocejo, Richard E. 2024. Preface, Introduction, chaps. 1-2 in Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.   Monday, October 28 Urban "curation" and race Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. How is gentrification a racialized process in Newburgh? 2. What's so racist about architectural preservation, creative undertakings, and community involvement by Newburgh's gentrifiers?   Assigned readings: Ocejo, Sixty Miles Upriver: chaps. 3-5.   SPECIAL EVENT: evening of Tuesday, October 29 Campus lecture by Richard Ocejo: "Old Problems in New Places: Gentrification and Race in Small City America."   URBAN DESIGN: THE ARSENAL OF EXCLUSION Wednesday, October 30 Lecturer: Tobias Armborst. Agenda for the day: Looking at the built environment around us, we can find countless subtle or not-so-subtle ways in which people have demarcated territories in order to limit spatial access by others. Employing the framework of the Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion, we will identify a couple of tools of demarcation that have been deployed on and around. These tools can be artifacts (such as buildings, pieces of infrastructure, and other stuff), but they can also be rules and regulations such as zoning codes and parking rules, or they can be political or legal boundaries such as those between school districts or municipalities. Some of these tools are immediately visible (gates, barriers, bouncers…), others (such as zoning codes, municipal boundaries, parking rules,…) can only be gleaned from indirectly related evidence. Assigned readings: Armborst, Tobias, Daniel D’Oca and Georgeen Theodore. 2017. The Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion. Barcelona: Actar. Read the Introduction, then scan the keywords across this excerpt and choose five keyword entries to read.   URBAN POLICY: HOUSING AND PARKING (FOUR MONDAYS) Monday, November 4 A first pass at the U.S. housing crisis Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. What is the scope of the housing affordability crisis? Unaffordable for whom? 2. What kinds of places are the least affordable to live in? 3. How do the private and public sectors coordinate the construction of housing in the U.S.?   Assigned readings: Edelberg, Wendy, Sara Estep, Stephanie Lu and Emily Moss. 2021. "A Comparison of Renters and Homeowners in Recent Decades." The Hamilton Project, paper, April 21. Lowrey, Annie. 2022. "The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine." The Atlantic, November 21. "What Kalamazoo (Yes, Kalamazoo) Reveals About the Nation’s Housing Crisis." New York Times, August 22, 2024. LaBriola, Joe. 2023. "Housing Supply as a Social Process." Pp. 179-189 in The Sociology of Housing: How Homes Shape Our Social Lives, edited by B.J. McCabe and E. Rosen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.   Wednesday, November 6 Second pair of essays due. Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez.   SPECIAL EVENT: evening of Wednesday, November 6 Campus lecture by Prentiss Dantzler: "Racial Capitalism and (Re)production of Urban Spaces."   Monday, November 11 The social life of parking Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. What assumptions about U.S. cities (and suburbs) inform the ample road space given to parking? 2. Never mind the people in cars — how do all those free parking spaces alone impact urban sustainability? 3. How do municipalities benefit from the parking status quo?   Assigned readings: "Why Does This Building by the Subway Need 193 Parking Spots? (Yes, Exactly 193.)" New York Times, October 18, 2014. Grabar, Henry. 2023. Introduction, chaps. 1-8 in Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. New York: Penguin.   ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES: CITIES AND CLIMATE CHANGE Wednesday, November 13 Why climate change? Lecturer: Pinar Batur. Agenda for this section: Cities will define our possibilities in the age of climate change. The risks we imagine, the policies we debate, and the plans we make will affect our future. This section will argue that climate change is now and the need to imagine the future is more important than ever. The intersection of two pressing issues defines our focus: the dominance of the urban on global economics, politics and society, and the impact of climate change, including intensified weather patterns and rapidly rising sea levels. By the middle of the century, it is estimated that 70% of the world’s population will live in coastal urban metropolitan areas; and cities will struggle to adapt to, and mitigate, the impact of climate change, and to develop resilience and sustainability plans to survive in World Risk Society. And never forget the rule of inequality and racism: the people who contribute the least will suffer most from the effects of climate change.   Assigned readings: Meyer, Robinson. 2020. "This is Your Life on Climate Change." The Atlantic, January 15. Marlon, Jennifer, et al. 2022. "How Do Climate Change Views Differ by Generation?" Generations (blog), American Society on Aging, June 22. Schiffman, Richard. 2022. "For Gen Z, Climate Change Is a Heavy Emotional Burden." E360, Yale School of the Environment, April 28. "Unprecedented Number of Heat Records Broken Around World This Year," The Guardian, August 14, 2024. What is the climate crisis? Check these out: U.S. Global Change Research Program. 2009. "Climate Literacy." U.S. Global Change Research Program/Climate Change Science Program, Washington, DC, March. "Atlas of the Invisible: using data to map the climate crisis," The Guardian, September 1, 2021.   Monday, November 18 Risk and extreme weather Lecturer: Pinar Batur. Questions for today: 1. Risks elude our everyday physical perception. Is it possible for us to conceptualize them? How? 2. Risks are experienced both individually and collectively. Is it possible for them to be condensed into collective shared patterns of perception, creating a base for collective action? 3. What is the role of power relationships of defining risks: who decides? How can "we, the people" do it?   Assigned readings: Beck, Ulrich. 2016. "How Climate Change Might Save the World." Pp. 35-47 in The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming Our Concept of the World. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Beck, Ulrich. 2009. "World Risk Society and the Manufactured Uncertainties." Iris 1(October 2): 291-299. Investigate what happened to this section of New York after the floods to talk about risks: "Could New York's 'Black Mayonnaise' Problem Sink a New 82-Block Development?" The Guardian, September 20, 2021. "A First Dog on the Moon live action cartoon! Will the coronavirus save us from climate change?" The Guardian, May 20, 2020. "If you think Covid is bad, wait until you hear about the climate crisis," The Guardian, November 9, 2020.   Wednesday, November 20 Climate change and environmental racism Lecturer: Pinar Batur. Questions for today: 1. Is it possible to "urban" as long as there is racism? 2. What kind of scars do climate crisis and racism leave on urban space? What kind of urban future is possible? 3. How devastating will "climate apartheid" and "climate refugees" be by the year 2030? 4. Is it possible to exist within and benefit from racist system, and not be racist?   Assigned readings: "How Much Racism Do You Face Every Day?" New York Times, January 20, 2020. Mohai, Paul, David Pellow and J. Timmons Roberts. 2009. "Environmental Justice," Annual Review of Environmental Resources 34: 405-30. Activist Catherine Flowers: The Poor Living Amid Sewage is 'The Final Monument of the Confederacy,' The Guardian, February 11, 2021. "'If White People Were Still Here, This Wouldn't Happen': The Majority-Black Town Flooded with Sewage," The Guardian, February 11, 2021. Klein, Naomi. 2017. "How Power Profits From Disaster." The Guardian, July 6. Klein, Naomi. 2019. "We Are Seeing the Beginnings of the Era of Climate Barbarism." The Guardian, September 14. García, Michelle. 2020. "The Media Isn’t Ready to Cover Climate Apartheid." The Nation, June 17. Jeff Goodell, a section from "The Water will Come" AND Lagos in Nigeria.   Monday, November 25 Cities without parking (or, more realistically, with far fewer parking spaces) Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. How does parking contribute to the affordable housing crisis? 2. What will cities and suburbs look like if parking reforms are implemented? 3. Is reforming parking viable in today's political climate?   Assigned readings: "What to Know About Congestion Pricing," New York Times, November 14, 2024. "Have you ever thought about how far you're actually walking after parking your car?" @streetcraft, TikTok, November 18, 2024. Grabar, Henry. 2023. Chaps. 9-15, Conclusion in Paved Paradise.   Wednesday, November 27 Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez.   Recommended readings: Rodrigue, Jean-Paul. 2020. "Transportation and Land Use." In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Audrey Kobayashi, 2nd ed. Elsevier Science & Technology. Barton, Jonathan, R. 2019. "Climate Change and Cities." In Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedias in Social Sciences: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, edited by Anthony M. Orum, 1st ed. Wiley.   November 28-29: THANKSGIVING RECESS   URBAN FUTURES: THE RIGHT TO THE CITY Monday, December 2 Olympic cities Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez. Questions for today: 1. Can hosting the Olympics be good for cities? 2. How does hosting the Olympics involve "surplus absorption through urban transformation" (to use David Harvey's terminology)? 3. How do class relations structure the right to the city, according to David Harvey?   Assigned readings: "Olympic Spirit in Brazil? They Stoned the Torch Relay," New York Times, August 4, 2016. "Paris, Uncharacteristically Giddy, Bids Au Revoir to the Olympics," New York Times, August 11, 2024. "Los Angeles Has Promised a 'Car-Free' Olympics in 2028. Can It Do It?" New York Times, August 10, 2024. Harvey, David. 2008. "The Right to the City." New Left Review 53 (Sept-Oct): 23-40. Herod, A. 2019. "Spatial Fix." In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, edited by A.M. Orum.   Wednesday, December 4 Third pair of essays due. Private mega-developments Questions for today: 1. What problems do efforts at creating private cities solve? 2. What problems would private cities make likely? 3. Given the scale of political, economic, and environmental problems today, are "moon shot" mega-developments our best prospect?   Assigned readings: "Saudi Arabia's Thoroughly Iconic, Unsustainable City in the Desert," New York Times, June 11, 2024. "The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down," New York Times Magazine, August 28, 2024.   Monday, December 9 Last day of class. Lecturer: Leonard Nevarez.   Sunday, December 15 (last day of study period) Urban studies research plan due.